


Paraselene

by Effing



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Developing Relationship, Domestic, Ghosts, Kid Fic, M/M, Possession, Team as Family, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25232887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Effing/pseuds/Effing
Summary: Steve and Loki have a son. Too bad nobody told either of them before Loki up and got himself killed by Thanos.
Relationships: Loki & Steve Rogers, Loki/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Original Child Character(s), background Pepper Potts/Tony Stark - Relationship
Comments: 48
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> \ ¦parəsə̇¦lē(ˌ)nē \
> 
> An optical phenomenon, also called a moon dog or mock moon, in which one or two bright, circular spots of light form alongside a bright moon instead of a full lunar halo. Paraselenae are caused by moonlight refracting through ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds.

There's a kid in the common area; normally this would be cause for concern, but it's been like a week now and Steve's finally getting used to his presence. "Hey, Sunny! Whatcha doing?"

"Drawing." He doesn't look up when he answers, just keeps scribbling on the sheet of computer paper in front of him. There's patches of blue and red on one side, assembled under a splash of yellow to form a vaguely humanoid shape. The figure on the other side is green and yellow and black under more black, and then in between is the part Sunny's working on right now, a blob of orange under a low patch of black that must be his hair.

"That looks really good. Did Loki help you with the colors?"

Sunny nods, puts his crayon down, and picks up a purple one. "He said I should pick colors from you and him so you can send it to Uncle Thor, but I like mine better." And there's the part that's taking more getting used to. According to Sunny, Steve and Loki are his dads. The evidence against this statement is as follows:

  * The limit of their interactions prior to this was the fight in Germany, the Quinjet ride after, and then Loki turning into Steve to mock him in Stark Tower after the Battle of New York.
    * Assuming Loki would even be able to get pregnant if they'd had the time and inclination to fuck in the first place, which shouldn't even be on the table, but he was a magic alien so Steve is just gonna never ask Thor about it on pain of getting an honest answer.
  * Loki is a ghost at best and the imagined version of a dead man at worst so any arguments attributed to him should be taken with a grain of salt.



The evidence in favor, unfortunately, is considerably more substantial:

  * Sunny says that Loki says SHIELD took blood samples while he was in their custody, which is apparently all they need if they have the right magic and/or technology.
  * Sunny also says Loki did a spell and that's how he knows.
  * SHIELD definitely took blood samples from Steve before and after he woke up.
  * Project Cabbage Patch, 2011-2014, in which a pack of Hydra scientists with too much time and funding attempted to create the next generation of supersoldier by combining Steve's genetic material with anything they could get their hands on. The only recorded success was born in 2013, using Loki's DNA, and named Malachi, but everyone associated with the project was arrested or dead within a year of the SHIELD leak with no sign of the baby.
    * Bruce and Rhodey have been putting together a scrapbook of printouts about this and having a blast. Aside from the actual documents, there's three websites, a subreddit, and a TMZ article from right after the incident in Germany. A lot of things seem to happen to Steve in Germany.
  * Yesterday Sunny turned into a kitten and spent an hour stuck in a tree. Steve only found him because something that felt like a pair of invisible hands wouldn't stop pushing at him until he went in the right direction.



So Sunny is probably telling the truth, and there's stuff in at least one of the labs for someone to run a DNA test to be sure, but the last month's been so hard that Steve honestly doesn't care and thinks Thor won't either.

"We'll give it to him anyway," Steve says of Sunny's picture, joining him on the floor next to the coffee table. "I'm sure he'll love it."

☆★

There's basically nothing kid-friendly to do in the entire compound, so Steve and Sunny drive to town. They go to the bookstore first, and the children's section is bright and welcoming like walking into a cartoon. Sunny picks out some books he likes the pictures of, Steve finds a couple longer ones he recognizes, and then a bunch of science books start falling off the shelves one by one. Sunny runs over, laughing, to pick them up. "Loki says these!"

"Tell Loki to keep it to three," Steve replies, "we've still got a lot of shopping after this." He sees nothing in the bit of air Sunny turns to after that, but Sunny consults it repeatedly while separating out the requested number, so obviously _he_ sees something. Steve puts the chosen science books with the rest of their selections, helps Sunny put the rest back, and wonders who he can talk to about communicating with ghosts.

★☆

Sunny conks out while they're looking at clothes—he has a few outfits bought the day after he showed up, but if Steve can afford to provide him with more than a week's worth he's damn well gonna—so Steve grabs one more toy on the sly and makes a quick stop by the art supplies before they head back home. He resurfaces while Steve's carrying him to bed, just enough to mumble something into Steve's shoulder.

"What's that?"

"Can I call you Daddy," Sunny repeats, a little clearer the second time around. "Mr. Winslow at the farm said not to but Loki said I shouldn't listen to nasty little blood thieves."

It's probably a good thing Sunny can't see Steve's face right now, because he's trying very hard not to laugh at such villainous phrasing coming from the mouth of a small child. "You can call me Dad or Daddy or Steve, whatever makes you happy," he manages to say. "Mr. Winslow doesn't get to decide that for either of us."

"Okay." Just like that he's back to sleep, and Steve has time to bring everything in, paint a cheerful sunshine on the inside of the bedroom door, and carefully place a stuffed snake toy slightly longer than Sunny is tall before he wakes up again.

☆★

Later, when Sunny's gone to bed for real, Nat catches Steve drawing a ouija board on taped-together sheets of computer paper and immediately brings out the vodka. Rhodey, when he finds them, joins in the drinking but refuses to participate because he knows how these movies go. Bruce asks why they don't just get a wizard to help; when Steve explains he wants to try it the dumb way first, he knocks back a shot, shakes himself loose, and joins Natasha and Steve in a circle—triangle—around the coffee table. The three of them each put fingers on the upside-down shot glass serving as a planchette.

"Okay, let's do this before I regret something," Steve says. "Loki, are you here?"

The room is silent, save for the background hum of appliances and lights and every electronic Tony could fit in when he was designing the place. Just on the edge of hearing a bit of music creeps in, like someone left a radio on.

Seconds march slowly, relentlessly forward as the shot glass refuses to move… and then it changes its mind.

H-A-H-A-H-A-H-A-H-A

"Yeah, that's really making me regret sitting this out," Rhodey says. He's taking notes on his phone, though, so he can't be too creeped out.

W-H-Y-H-A-V-E-Y-O-U-C-A-L-L-E-D-M-E

"You and I need to be able to talk to each other directly if you're gonna be here haunting Sunny," Steve explains. "This 'Loki says' stuff is cute now, but I'm sure you can imagine how unreliable it'll be as he gets older."

The shot glass sits for a moment as if pausing for thought. A-N-D-T-H-I-S-I-S-Y-O-U-R-P-R-O-P-O-S-E-D-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-?

"Whoever invented these things clearly didn't anticipate their ghosts being so wordy," Natasha mutters halfway through the message. Steve chooses to ignore her.

"This is just opening the lines. If you've got a better method, now's the time to share."

I-C-O-U-L-D-A-L-W-A-Y-S-P-O-S-S-E-S-S-O-N-E-O-F-Y-O-U-R-F-R-I-E-N-D-S

Steve glares at the air above the board. "And I could always stick you in a porcelain doll and sell you on eBay."

I-W-A-S-J-O-K-I-N-G

"I wasn't. Do you actually have any ideas, or do I have to go to the wizard?"

F-I-N-E the shot glass spells out, lingering on each letter in a way that could be exasperation or mere petulance. I-C-A-N-E-N-T-E-R-D-R-E-A-M-S-W-I-T-H-P-E-R-M-I-S-S-I-O-N and then a pause. Steve realizes he might wanna add punctuation if they keep using this thing. I-H-A-V-E-A-L-S-O-B-E-E-N-E-X-P-E-R-I-M-E-N-T-I-N-G-W-I-T-H-E-L-E-C-T-R-O-N-I-C-S-W-H-I-C-H-Y-O-U-H-A-V-E-I-N-A-B-U-N-D-A-N-C-E-H-E-R-E-B-U-T-T-H-E-P-R-O-C-E-S-S-I-S-I-N-E-X-A-C-T

Suddenly an entire surround sound system's worth of speakers bursts to life around them, a white noise roar fading into synthesized music and a voice singing that "everybody wants to rule the world". When the song keeps going, Natasha and Rhodey and Bruce begin to laugh from some combination of nerves and alcohol, but Steve is still focused on the board in front of him.

A-S-I-S-A-I-D-I-N-E-X-A-C-T

"Keep working on it," Steve says after a moment's consideration. "Barring me suddenly learning how to see ghosts, it's our best means of communication right now. We'll try the dream thing, too, but keep in mind if you so much as put a foot wrong inside my head, I'll make sure you get exorcised so hard Sunny can't even see you on Halloween."

I-D-L-I-K-E-T-O-S-E-E-Y-O-U-T-R-Y Loki says, and Steve can picture a scythe-sharp grin as clearly as if it were in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouija boards: when hunt-and-peck typing is just too fast.
> 
> It's been a long, long time since I've dared show the public a fic that wasn't already complete or mostly so by the time I posted it, but I've been in the mood to try something different lately so here we are ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Cross your fingers with me and enjoy the ride!


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, there's rainbows everywhere and Sunny brings his stuffed snake to the table. Steve puts a bowl of cereal in front of Sunny and an empty bowl in front of the snake. "Some for you, and some for Yo-yo," he says; Sunny beams at him and proceeds to alternate between eating his cereal and pushing the snake's nose into a cereal illusion in the second bowl.

"Every morning there's a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's four-post bed," the sound system chirps.

"Good morning, Loki," Steve responds—he'd been listening to the song this one interrupted, and Avengers HQ just doesn't have internet bad enough to drop a song halfway through, which leaves just the one likely culprit. Yo-yo's fake cereal develops milk splashes and crunching noises, which is neither confirmation nor denial, but it's not particularly important so Steve settles into his own breakfast.

"Can I play with you in the gym today?" Sunny asks when his bowl is empty. Steve hides his surprise—he's let Sunny be in there with him while he works out, the better to keep an eye on him, but Sunny's been happy with coloring and toys and his illusions so far, so it hasn't even occurred to Steve that he might want to horse around sometimes.

He feels kinda stupid, all of a sudden. Of course Sunny wants to play, he's a _kid_. "Sure you can," he says, slipping false confidence on like a mask. "Anybody taught you how to do a cartwheel yet?"

Sunny shakes his head, eyes wide the way they always get when he's presented with something new and mysterious. "What's a cartwheel?"

☆★

Cartwheels are just enough of a challenge to be engaging: Sunny has the upper body strength to support himself on his hands, but not the confidence to raise his feet above waist-level. He grasps the basics pretty much immediately, though, and spends the next ten minutes tumbling around the gym after Steve, kicking his heels a little higher every time in an attempt to catch up. Steve slows himself down to give Sunny the chance, bemoaning the life of an old wheel on a muddy road as he holds handstands at odd angles and rocks back and forth on his hands to pretend he's working himself free.

By the time Sunny actually catches him, his cartwheels have straightened out considerably, and he's beaming as they take a water break. Steve ruffles his hair, wondering not for the first time how it got so curly—rhetorically, because if nothing else he's been friends with Natasha long enough to be familiar with the concept of hair straighteners. Afterwards they jump rope for a bit, then make a game of Sunny evading Steve's deliberately clumsy attempts to catch him, and when that's wiped Sunny out they go watch some Sesame Street in the common area.

"It's my voodoo working," the sound system informs them after Sesame Street is over. This one is easier to figure out than the song at breakfast: Loki must want to talk magic with the kid. When Sunny slithers off the couch to sit in front of the coffee table, Steve heads to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich real quick—

_"Can't forget about second breakfast," Sam says, somehow finding the energy to be chipper even after months on the run as he passes Steve a squashed pastry—_

and comes back to find Sunny has developed a flickering, vaguely luminous twin. He actually seems to be concentrating, so Steve grabs a seat off to the side in case there's a fire or something and leaves him to it.

★☆

Lunch is more sandwiches, because Steve has three cooking skills and two of them are boiling water. Fortunately, Sunny doesn't seem to mind as long as his PB&J is cut into a star shape.

"Did you know snakes smell with their tongues? Loki says I should look at real snakes because it's easier to turn into things when you know them." Sunny's magic lesson must've gone well, if the way he's chattering is any indication. It's honestly adorable, so Steve prompts him to keep going.

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"Magic can find things you don't know," Sunny explains, "so turning into something you don't know takes knowing magic _and_ changing magic. If you already know it, it only takes changing magic."

"So changing into a snake would be harder for you than turning into a kitten?"

Sunny nods. "I saw lots of cats at the farm and when I came here."

"What else did you do today?" Steve asks. It still bothers him that Sunny traveled all this way with nothing but a ghost and his own magic to keep him safe, but there's nothing to be done about it now except make sure he's never put into that position again. Anyway, Sunny is stretching his arms over the table, so Steve needs to focus on the here and now.

A ball of light appears in the air in front of Sunny's hands. It can't be any bigger than a golf ball, but it shines silvery-white like a star and, when Steve brings his hand near, emits no heat. "We made nightlights!"

"That's really something," Steve says, and he means it.

☆★

There's a knock at the door. Steve rises from the couch and crosses the apartment in the dark, yawning and scratching his beard as he goes to answer. Loki is radiating impatience on the other side, arms crossed and mouth pressed thin. "Well?" he says, nodding in Steve's direction like, what, he expects to be invited in?

Steve realizes he's dreaming then. His beard immediately vanishes; unfortunately, Loki remains.

"Can I help you?"

Loki, miraculously, tenses even further. "If I don't speak to an actual adult in the next five minutes, you and I are both going to find out whether it's possible for a ghost to explode."

Steve lets him in.

The apartment is small and run-down, an amalgamation of the longer-term shitholes he, Natasha, Sam, and Wanda stayed at the last couple of years. The lights are all on as he leads Loki into the living room, revealing cracked plaster and faded wallpaper Steve had mostly forgotten about.

" _Thank_ you," Loki says once they're settled, Steve back on the couch and he perched on the very edge of an armchair that had, admittedly, been pretty gross in real life. He still hasn't really relaxed any, but Steve doesn't blame him. "Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to spend an entire month surrounded by people who can neither see nor hear you, and the one person who can is only a child?"

It's a surprisingly reasonable complaint, and that's the part that convinces Steve to play nice. Loki's been speaking in song for three days now, and for Steve it's been like having a surreal, limited version of JARVIS around—an AI in the walls that can only snark indirectly and keep an eye on Sunny. Seeing Loki in front of him now, wound tight on a badly-stained memory, Steve regrets not looking any farther than that. "I used to do a stage show for kids," he says by way of apology, "so I can begin to imagine."

Loki doesn't so much sag into the chair as gracefully liquefy in place, which has to be something he's practiced. "I _wish_ I were doing a stage show. I could pay someone to bring me wine and little sandwiches while Sunny plays 'Captain America saves his animal friends' for the five hundredth time."

"Oh my god." This is simultaneously the most delightful and embarrassing thing Steve has heard in ages, and he has no idea how to process it. Loki seems not to care either way and keeps talking.

"I _know_. It's disgustingly adorable, which just proves he's yours, because any child of mine would have realized 'let's stab Thor' is more fun by now."

"Please, you love Thor," Steve says, automatic and dismissive.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to stab him," Loki agrees, and just like that Steve believes every vaguely noble thing Thor told the team about his brother's demise while they waited for Carol and Rocket to scour the universe. It doesn't excuse their first meeting, but it does make Steve feel like there's a path towards raising his son right that doesn't involve cutting Loki out entirely.

They chat idly through the night. After the last few years, that alone makes it a pretty good dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I managed to get this chapter done in time, I'm gonna go ahead and make official my plan to update this every other Monday. I've got five more chapters outlined after this and more to work with after, so if all goes well you'll be seeing a lot of me the next few months!
> 
> The songs mentioned in this chapter are Every Morning by Sugar Ray and Long Snake Moan by PJ Harvey.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for some emotional monologuing?

Steve wakes at 3 AM to the sharp crack of thunder. _A summer storm,_ he thinks, but no—the forecast has clear skies all week.

Sunny is on the other side of the door to Steve's room when he opens it, wide-eyed and silent, clutching Yo-yo to his chest. Steve scoops him up and keeps walking. "That was a big one, huh?" he says; Sunny manages a tremulous little nod where he's buried his face in Steve's shoulder. "That's because it was _special_ thunder. You remember hearing about Uncle Thor?" Sunny nods again, and then it seems he's put two and two together: he lifts his head to look forward as Steve approaches the outside door, and so they're both watching when it opens and an enormous shadow on the other side resolves itself into an equally enormous blond guy carrying a battle axe.

Sunny looks away to something in front of Steve, then splays the fingers of one hand in an uncertain flourish. "Surprise," he says quietly. Thor, watching from the doorway, bursts into tears.

This is really not how Steve was expecting introductions to go. He stays where he is, planning to give Thor space to sort himself out, but Sunny pushes against his chest to be let down and then walks right over, holding Yo-yo out for Thor to take. "Yo-yo gives good hugs."

"Snakes often do," Thor says. He crouches down to accept the toy, drapes it solemnly over his shoulders, and dries his eyes like nothing even happened. "I thank you for lending me his power." Sunny nods and returns to Steve, who picks him back up without complaint.

"Something up in Norway, or did you just forget about the time difference?"

Thor at least has the decency to look sheepish as he straightens. "My apologies. I wanted only to see young Sunny in person and forgot you all might be sleeping."

"Well you can make up for it by helping me put him back to bed," Steve tells him without rancor. Thor follows Steve back to Sunny's room peaceably and leaves his axe in the hall.

"Have you ever seen Loki's helmet?" he asks while Steve is tucking Sunny back in. Sunny shakes his head, and Thor sits down on the side of the bed to lay Yo-yo down next to him. "It had horns on it, just like your fuzzy friend here, only _much_ much longer. He was always very proud of them, for they meant he had proven himself a warrior of surpassing ferocity in the eyes of Asgard." Thor's voice is gentle as he speaks—not objectively, Steve's pretty sure the thunder thing means he's physically incapable, but gentle for _him_ , which is sweet. "My helm had wings on it, for valor, but I didn't often wear it, so I lost it." _Along with Asgard_ goes unsaid, but the grief in Thor's eyes isn't hard to see.

"Are Captain America's wings for valor too?" Sunny asks; even dozing off, he pronounces the new word carefully.

"You will have to ask him yourself," Thor answers, "but I have always thought so."

Sunny makes a noise of acceptance as his eyes drift closed. They stay that way long enough that Steve and Thor start heading for the door, and then: "Daddy says he's sorry for the accidental pun." Thor freezes in his tracks and Steve makes the split-second decision to continue to the door and spare his dignity.

"You may tell him I forgive him, but only because I know how much he prefers they be intentional." His voice is steady as can be, and it's not until they return to the common area and Steve sees his face again that he knows Thor's shed more tears.

"How you doing?"

Thor, sprawling regally on a couch with Stormbreaker set down on the nearest coffee table, nonetheless looks possibly the most miserable and desolate Steve's ever seen him. "A part of me has been waiting for Loki to reveal his deception from the moment Thanos crushed his neck. 'He's only waiting until he's absolutely sure it's safe,' I thought, 'or perhaps until someone catches him out and forces his hand.' And then I thought I was moving past that, accepting that he died along with half our people and half again, but—" The pause goes on, seconds heavy enough to break glass, until finally Thor covers his eyes with a shuddering intake of breath. "Why would he continue to hide from a brother who's forgiven him and a son who doesn't know any better?"

From anyone else, the tone would be called pleading, and Steve doesn't know what to do with that. Thor's always been an action guy, someone who's never seemed to dwell on things longer than it took to knock them down. It makes sense in the abstract that Loki's habit of defying death should hamper Thor's ability to process the real thing, but at the same time this is a guy who calls up _literal storms_ when he feels like being dramatic turning to Steve for answers.

Something whacks Steve on the shoulder, interrupting his indecision spiral with a succinct reminder that they're not the only ones awake. Of course Loki would be in here with them. Of course the guy who led Sunny here safely would care that his brother is upset. Steve sits next to Thor, steels his nerve, and says what he's feeling.

"Look, I don't know what to tell you. I've known the guy a couple of weeks, and most of that's been 'Loki says I should learn how to stab people in the knees' or him hijacking the radio. But I lost Sam and Wanda that day, and I lost Bucky a second time, so I do know how much _everything_ hurts right now, and I can promise I'll always have space for you—as an Avenger, yes, but also as a friend and a part of Sunny's family."

Thor sniffles, then uncovers his eyes with a grin that's only a little watery. " _Has_ he started learning to stab people yet?"

"Oh my god." That is absolutely not what Steve wanted Thor to take from this, but at this point he honestly doesn't care too much as long as it makes Thor feel less terrible. "No, he hasn't started learning to stab people, he's five!"

"The perfect age!" Thor retorts cheerfully. "When I return to my people, I'll see if any of Loki's knives made it into their things so Sunny can learn from his father's weapons like a proper Asgardian."

"If he puts his eye out, I'm sending it to you in a jar to remind you what a terrible uncle you are." An idle threat—Steve would never let Sunny hurt himself that badly—but it's fun trading verbal jabs again instead of moping around the compound, which is what it feels like Steve's been doing with all his limited grownup time recently.

"I would expect no less!" Thor's grin widens, then softens a bit. "Thank you, though. I'd long given up hope of seeing Loki's blood tied to anyone I could call friend. That the person he now shares a son with is you, however ill the circumstances, is both an honor to our family and a joy, and I shall be proud to call you brother henceforth."

 _Brother._ That's another thing Steve isn't sure what to do with, but this one he thinks he'll have time to figure out. "Damn," he says, "that was way better than mine."

Thor laughs, loud and sharp like thunder.

☆★

Most nights up to this point, Sunny's had a pretty consistent bedtime routine: Loki tells him a story nobody else can hear, or (more recently) Steve reads to him from one of his books. Tonight, though, after a long day of roughhousing with Thor and poorly-timed naps and jumping into places children should neither be in nor be capable of reaching, Sunny is apparently ready for yet another new thing.

"I want Loki to read to me about space. Please." His voice is quiet but firm, a nervous determination Steve was once intimately familiar with and can't help but reward now. He grabs the space book off the shelf and brings it over to where Sunny is already snuggled up in bed.

"Do you want me to help turn the pages?"

Sunny looks at the book in Steve's hand, at his own arms wrapped around Yo-yo, and then guiltily back to Steve. "Yes, please." Steve smiles and settles down next to him, in what's becoming his habitual reading seat.

"Alright, just lemme know when." He holds the book between them like he's the one reading it and waits. The bed shifts a little—it feels like someone sitting down on Sunny's other side, but of course there's no one else to be seen—and then a moment later Sunny says "open".

Steve does as he's told. When Sunny says "page", he turns the page, reading along silently to amuse himself and to see if he can figure out Loki's pace. The book talks in simple terms about moons and stars, about planets and asteroids and comets, and somehow Steve doesn't even notice Sunny's voice getting quieter and less clear until they're near the end of the book and no order comes.

And then something brushes the back of his hand. Steve jumps right out of his skin, startling Sunny awake in the process, and proceeds to spend the rest of this book and all of the next one feeling like an idiot. Sunny does make it back to sleep, though. Eventually.

"The word that would best describe this feeling would be haunted…" the hallway speakers croon, soft and somehow sarcastic when Steve finally leaves Sunny's room. He pulls out his phone and starts looking for porcelain dolls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song referenced in this chapter is Haunted When the Minutes Drag by Love and Rockets.
> 
> Oh, and I forgot to mention: I'm just bullshitting the helmets thing because I wanted a reason for Thor to be like "ah, yes, a stuffed snake with horns on its face. Just like your father!" and the valor/ferocity thing just hit right. Also, bonus points to anyone who figures out what kind of real snake Yo-yo is modeled after!


	4. Chapter 4

" _Peaches_ ," a voice whispers in Steve's ear, and he drops his fucking butter knife. Disembodied laughter floats through the kitchen as he cleans up the resulting condiment-splattering mess, recognizable as Loki's voice now that Steve's paying attention. His annoyance abates just the tiniest bit—he can't fault Loki for being easily amused if nobody gets hurt.

There are peach fruit cups in the pantry, he remembers. "Sunny _wants_ peaches, or _you_ think he should _have_ peaches?" For a moment there's no response; then, a tap on his left shoulder.

It's the first time they've deliberately tried to communicate like this, but Steve's brain processes the most likely interpretations quickly and concludes they offer the same answer. "The first one?" Again, a tap on his left shoulder; either Steve is right or Loki is being deliberately confusing. The only way to be sure is to ask Sunny directly, but he's off with Natasha learning to do each other's nails and he likes peaches anyway, so it feels easier to just trust Loki on this single inconsequential matter.

He goes back to making lunch. A few minutes later Sunny and Natasha arrive, each wearing five different colors of nail polish, and Sunny runs to the table with a delighted gasp. "Peaches!"

Loki wins this round.

☆★

Under normal circumstances, in a building full of normal people,Loki's presence would be terrifying. Sometimes, when the music starts unprompted, it starts wrong: too loud, often, or distant and tinny like it's coming from something older and more degraded than the high-end speakers embedded in the walls. Sometimes it's slow and distorted and the words are impossible to interpret—if they can be recognized at all.

Sometimes Steve sees Loki out of the corner of his eye, corpse-pale face and his neck bruised black, and the only sensible part of him left says _run_. He turns to look directly, instead, and inevitably finds no one there.

"You mortals could pick up just about anything if you spend long enough swimming in it," Loki says in a dream. His tone is an even split between grudging respect and fascinated disgust, his pallor bookish rather than bloodless. Steve feels a little less crazy every time he lets Loki in for one of these little get-togethers, and a little more crazy every time he wakes up.

★☆

A couch slides backwards an entire foot, seemingly of its own volition. Bruce, in the process of sitting where the couch had been, keeps dropping until his ass hits the floor and loses his pizza to boot.

Steve feels bad about laughing, but Bruce is fine so only a little.

☆★

GET OUT is written on the wall in three-foot-tall smears that look like blood. Steve sighs and goes to get a sponge.

★☆

The Monday after Thor visits, Steve and Sunny finally go to the park. Between Sunny taking to their evasive training game like a greased weasel and how high he can apparently jump, Steve is a little less concerned about taking him out in public than when he first arrived.

The park itself is only slightly less depressing than other parts of town: posters for missing family members and pets are mostly concentrated around the entrance and parking lot light poles, birdsong occurs in strange all-or-nothing patches, and even the ducks seem down in the dumps, but there are other people in the playground area or walking their dogs so it's not a complete ghost town. "Try not to break anything," Steve tells Sunny, and that's as far as he gets before Sunny's off like a rocket to join the other kids on the jungle gym.

"He must take after his mother," someone says behind him. Steve turns just in time to see a kid streak past him, away from a woman who's clearly also here on parent duty.

"Almost entirely," he agrees; it's easier than explaining to a stranger the non-standard method of Sunny's conception. "But he's cuter, so he gets away with it."

The woman's smile is commiserating. "That seems to be how it goes. You guys new in town?" The answer to that one is even more complicated, but Steve's better at shaping the truth than he used to be.

"Just him. I got custody a few weeks ago, and with everything going on it's been… a process." There, all correct and technically accurate. Natasha would be proud, especially when the woman's expression falls.

"I'm sorry. Was it because of…?" She gestures loosely around them, indicating the whole half-empty world, and Steve feels himself relax: this, he can be more honest about.

"That's what it looks like."

"I'm sorry," the woman says again, sincere enough that Steve can't help but correct her a little.

"It's fine. It was a complicated situation and I didn't even know there was a kid involved until he showed up on my doorstep, so." He shrugs and doesn't say the rest of the thought, that it hasn't been a loss for him, and if the woman's silence is judgmental she's doing a great job of not showing it.

"…Okay, do you mean 'restraining order' complicated or 'one night stand with my best friend's girl' complicated?"

And that's how Steve meets Dana.

("She's _married_ ," he tells Natasha later when she gets a certain look in her eye, "to a _woman_."

"You never let me have any fun.")

☆★

It's a normal dream. Steve doesn't know this, because he's too firmly a part of it to question the oddities, but it's a perfectly normal dream. He's at the SSR's London headquarters, but instead of Peggy and Howard and Phillips and the Howlies, the Avengers are there. Bucky is, too, hair short and face young but wearing that beautiful new vibranium arm, and Scott and the kid in the spider suit—he's wearing his costume whenever he shows up, and to Steve that seems as it should be.

Loki and Sunny are bent over the war table together, Loki drawing something and Sunny coloring it in; when Steve gets closer, he sees it's a diagram of the solar system, the sun positioned on the edge of the paper directly in front of Sunny and moving when he does.

"Darling, please sit still or we'll never finish," Loki says without looking up from the asteroid belt he's working on.

"But I wanna color Neptuuuune," Sunny whines. He stretches as far across the table as he can go without climbing onto it, but the whole diagram recenters and leaves him no closer to the outer planets than he was before. Loki huffs as his asteroids vanish and finally tears his attention away from the paper in front of him. Steve expects a reprimand; instead, Loki's gaze continues to rise until it meets Steve's, his irritation melting into a warm little smile.

"Can you handle Neptune for him?" Loki reaches out, offering a fresh box of crayons that Steve takes without thinking. Where their hands brush, the crayons turn to light, something Steve knows they both expected the moment it happens. Neither of them mentions it, because they don't need to. Steve takes his place at the table and starts coloring Neptune in with a beautiful blue light, his body burning with a pleasant electric fire.

When he wakes in the morning, all he remembers is a party with his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was like pulling teeth 😩😩😩 but it's in front of you now, so onward!


	5. Chapter 5

Tony comes over about a week before the wedding, which is a good two years earlier than Steve's best case estimate. "So I hear you managed to beat me to the dad thing against all odds," he says right out the gate. Steve couldn't deny it even if he wanted to—Sunny is perched on his shoulder in the form of a fledgling crow, croaking out the alphabet song with great enthusiasm.

"What," Tony continues, "did you guys just immediately turn this place into Cartoon Network while I was gone? You got Scooby Doo and Mickey Mouse running around somewhere?" His tone is light, but there's a snap to it that tells Steve this isn't going to be a fun visit.

"Sunny, how about you go show Aunt Natasha how good you're getting at nightlights while I talk to Tony?"

Sunny stops singing and eyeballs Tony in silence, then hops down from Steve's shoulder, changing back to human form midair to land on his feet with a loud smack. "Okay, Daddy," he says, and then he's off to the communication center without another word. Tony stares after him.

"It turns out shapeshifting runs in the family," Steve says. He tries to be purely sympathetic, because it really hasn't been that long since the tree incident so he knows how it feels to see an adorable baby animal turn into a curly-haired miniature Loki, but he is definitely also maybe a little smug about his kid bewildering the master of the verbal parry.

"I can see that," says Tony, wits about him even now, and just like that they're back on track again. Maybe. Steve's a little unsure, since Tony's just standing there looking equal parts awkward and angry, but he's patient enough he doesn't mind waiting to find out. He _does_ wait, and Tony, who's always been so painfully bad at not talking unless he's got something to tinker with in front of him, caves in under a minute.

"Okay _listen_ ," he says, "I'm not gonna beat around the bush. I'm still pissed at you for… everything. For running off when the world needed you, for siding with my parents' killer, for—" Tony pauses, drawing in a slow breath that's clearly meant to be calming. "For a previously addressed failure to keep promises.

"That being said! Rhodey has made a point of reminding me—frequently—that you and the rest of your kooky quartet are the reason we didn't lose Vision and the Mind Stone sooner, and honestly even if we _had_ all been together it's not like we had the means to launch a rescue mission once they got Strange off-planet."

He's talking fast, trying to cram words in like making this quicker matters, and maybe for him it does. Steve's a little concerned that if he tries to slow Tony down he'll only derail him entirely, so instead he folds his arms and keeps listening.

"I still need time to process how thoroughly we got the shit kicked out of us—which if past experience is any indicator is gonna be, pfft, _years_ —and I'm not gonna pretend I'm not still upset with you in the meantime, regardless of who's actually at fault, but a while ago you said this team was my family, and you were right.

"What you were wrong about is the part where you excluded yourself from that. You're just as much an Avenger as any of the rest of us yahoos, and even before that, whether you meant to be or wanted to be or not, you've basically been an honorary Stark… god, even longer than Rhodey has, and Rhodey's known me since before I could grow a beard. So if you don't want to come to my wedding, that's fine! But I would _really_ appreciate having my entire family there to watch me prove I can be a real, honest-to-god functional adult human being."

Steve doesn't say anything for a moment, trying to wrap his head around the mess of smaller ideas crammed into one giant super-idea Tony's presented him with. It's always weird to be reminded of his impact on Howard, and through him Tony—it hadn't felt like any deeper or more life-defining a friendship than any of their others during the war, but maybe Howard had had that same intensity towards people as Tony and was just better at hiding it.

It's also weird, though, to have one of his own little motivational nuggets turned back on him—the dumb, small, humble part of him never expected Tony to take that line in his letter seriously, and yet here they are less than a month after their last major argument, talking things out like adults.  
Not that Steve's said anything in… wow, it's been a minute. He's surprised Tony hasn't started talking again yet, but when Steve actually looks it turns out he's fidgeting with his phone, which means Steve has about five seconds prevent a synchronized robot vacuum dance number or whatever else Tony comes up with to fill the ongoing silence this time.

"Okay," he says before Tony can—hypothetically—push the mad science button. "If you really want me to be at the wedding, I'd love to come."

Tony puts his phone away immediately, face showing nothing so much as profound relief. "Fantastic! Thank god. I'm honestly about fifteen seconds from a meltdown, so I'm gonna get on out of here before that happens and spare you guys the cleanup." He starts to do just that, wheeling around and walking back towards the door, but he doesn't actually stop talking. "If you or your perky little death omen need threads, my suit guy's on file here, you know how it works. See you next Friday!"

With that, the door closes behind Tony. Steve weighs the merits of peeking out after him, just to be sure he's not _actually_ gonna have an episode, but before he can do anything Rhodey and Bruce emerge from the depths of the compound, as if they'd been either summoned or waiting for their cue.

"We've got it from here, Cap," Rhodey says with a nod to Steve as they walk after Tony. Then he claps Bruce on the shoulder. "And you said you're not that kind of doctor."

"I mean—" The door closes behind them, and Steve doesn't bother trying to listen further. Natasha and Sunny are still in the communication center when he tracks them down, Sunny proudly demonstrating his ability to create three nightlights at the same time.

"So? How'd it go?" Natasha asks, because Natasha needs to know everything.

"He had an escape plan," Steve reports, "and I'm invited to the wedding."

" _Really_." Natasha shifts in her chair, surprised but not visibly upset about it. "Seems a little early to forgive you that much."

"I think it's more like a temporary ceasefire," Steve says. He takes a seat as he speaks, hefting Sunny up into his lap when he immediately comes over. "Rhodey's been working on him, and Bruce is indirectly involved at minimum. Maybe one of them told him about the Thor thing and he got jealous." He doesn't think that's the case, though, or at least not all of it, and Natasha's doubtful noise tells him she thinks the same.

"Well, we have time to figure it out if we need to. Are you planning on _going_ to the wedding?"

Steve doesn't answer for a few moments, unable to give what he knows Natasha would consider the smart answer but simultaneously reluctant to disappoint her.

Not that it would be the first time.

"I am," he tells her simply; rather than disappointed, Natasha looks resigned.

"You know this is just gonna stress him out worse, right?"

"Yeah," Steve says, "but it'll also be me doing something he wants me to do for the first time in years, so it'll probably make him feel a lot better afterwards."

Natasha concedes with a groan. "I hate that you're not wrong." She eyes the displays in front of her for a moment, then starts closing programs. "Let me finish up in here real quick, and then we'll go see if we can't find ourselves something nice to wear. _My_ invite came via email," she continues before Steve can ask, which solves the problem of figuring out whose plus one she'd have to show up as.

When they leave, Natasha drives.

☆★

Vampires attack the following Tuesday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as Tony goes, I'm team "let this man be an emotionally stunted dipshit who tries".


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Vampire Incident

Afterwards, the really stupid part is that it's shaping up to be a nice, quiet night in. Sunny went to bed without a fuss and Loki hasn't fucked with anything for a solid hour. Bruce and Rhodey are out with Tony for his bachelor party, reassuringly dubbed Operation Get Hulk Smashed. Carol hasn't made it back to Earth yet, but Nebula and Rocket have, and they, Steve, and Natasha have all settled in the kitchen for light conversation and snacks.

It should definitely feel weird, but Steve's starting to feel like his weird meter is broken.  
"No, listen, I'm telling you it's beautiful! Every piece is solid wood, and you don't gotta worry about it burning because the trees on that planet evolved to withstand temperatures that would make your eyeballs shrivel up in their sockets!" Rocket starts clambering down from his seat, doing nothing to convince Steve he's not an actual raccoon. "Lemme go get it real quick, you guys are gonna love it," he says, and then he's off down the hall to presumably do as he said.

"You know," Natasha says to keep the conversation going, "I killed a guy with a wooden letter opener once. It was actually kinda messy." Five minutes later Steve is explaining to Nebula that yes, his weapon of choice is a bouncy metal shield, when he realizes Rocket hasn't made it back yet.

An alarm begins to sound.

"Intruder alert! Unauthorized persons in the residential area! Intruder alert! Unauthorized persons in the residential area!"

Steve is on his feet immediately, Nebula and Natasha not far behind. Natasha grabs kitchen knives from the knife block on the counter and passes them around, but before the three of them can go anywhere, the alarm shuts off.

"You know," an unfamiliar voice says, "I gotta say I like the flow of this place." Steve whirls, knife raised, to see a woman leaning in the doorway, looking around the room like this is an open house instead of a home invasion. "Real easy to get from point A—" The woman vanishes; Steve feels something grab the back of his neck and suddenly he's flying across the kitchen. "—To point B."

It's a lot to take in at once. It's also a situation Steve knows how to deal with. He can tell from his trajectory that he's headed for the table, so he puts that information aside and focuses on whipping his arm back to throw his knife at where he just was. The strange woman cries out in pain at the same time Steve crashes into the kitchen table.

"What the _shit_?" the woman snarls. When Steve looks, already leaping to his feet, he sees his knife buried in her leg and Nebula's through her collarbone—seriously just right through it—with Nebula still attached. That doesn't last long, though: the woman shoves Nebula off of her with enough force to knock her back a few feet, then yanks the knives out and tosses them aside.

The wounds don't bleed. Then the woman bares her teeth, revealing sharp fangs in place of normal human canines as she goes after Nebula, and Steve knows for sure what they're dealing with.

"Stab her in the heart and make sure it sticks," he barks, wrenching a leg off the mangled kitchen table, "or take her head off if that's easier. We're not winning this any other way."

"You maybe wanna tell us what the hell we're up against?" Natasha asks, hanging back now that she's seen their opponent's strength. Steve hands her the table leg so she can have a bit of reach, and she passes him her knife in turn.

" _Vampires_." He lunges at the woman—monster—before them, hoping to stab her in the back while she's distracted, but she darts away at the last second. Steve and Nebula twist past each other, narrowly avoiding a painful collision, and a sharp _crack_ rings out.

"Stay down," Natasha says. She has the vampire pinned to the floor with the table leg, broken end digging into her chest; the vampire is clutching her nose in clear pain, but when Natasha speaks she drops her hand and laughs.

"Oh, _honey_ ," the vampire says, "I'm incapable!" Before she can prove it, though, Natasha shifts her weight and shoves the table leg down through the vampire's heart; the vampire falls still and silent.

"I could've done that if you'd told me that's where human hearts are," Nebula offers after a long, tense moment. Steve immediately feels like an ass.

"You're right, sorry. I forgot about the whole biology thing."

"Hey, Steve, _what the fuck_ ," Natasha adds, and then Rocket drops out of an air vent.

"What are you guys standing around for? There's six more of these guys still in the building, and whatever forcefield you've got keeping them out of the kid's room isn't gonna last long!"

Turns out it's gonna be one of _those_ nights.

☆★

Steve heads back into the pantry while he explains, digging around until he finds the garlic stash. "So back during the war—Natasha knows about this part—I led kind of a special ops team called the Howling Commandos. We mostly went after Hydra, an organization within the enemy ranks, but occasionally we got other weird stuff, too."

There's some bamboo cutting boards in the cabinets, so he pulls those out and starts breaking them into narrow, roughly triangular pieces. "One of the guys, Falsworth, his dad died and left everything to him and his mom. The problem with this—" _snap_ "—is Falsworth had a brother, and _he_ was a Nazi sympathizer who wasn't happy being left out of the will."

When the cutting boards are all broken up, Steve starts wrapping paper towels around the dull ends to cover the splinters, then covers the paper towels in plastic wrap to hold it all together. "We never found out exactly what happened in the middle, but after a few months Falsworth's brother shows up deep in enemy territory with fangs, a bunch of new powers, and a strange aversion to sunlight. Had to kill him a few times before we figured vampires must be real and he was one of 'em. After that…"

Steve shrugs and gives everyone a head of garlic and a share of the improvised stakes, which get shoved into pockets and belts for easy access. "Garlic makes them weaker across the board. Any one of them is as strong as me and a lot faster, and then they can do other things like hypnotize you into doing their bidding, so keep the garlic on you at all times and worry about the smell tomorrow. Stake in the heart, decapitation, or sunlight will all kill them, mangling a limb will slow them down for a bit, and they can't enter a home uninvited, so if you need to escape and your room is nearby, you can head there."

According to Rocket's brief report, anyway. Steve would've thought at least this building out of the entire compound was safe, but seven vampires sneaking in undetected proves otherwise. Right now he has to trust what he's heard, has to trust that Sunny is safe a few minutes longer and not—

Loki is watching over him. If there's any fucking point in his still being here, it has to be this.

★☆

Two more vampires are waiting in the hall just past the main common room. The shorter one, a man in a coat about two sizes too big to give the dramatic flow it's cut for, grimaces. "Aw man," he whines, "it's less fun when they know what they're doing."

"Maybe for you," Rocket retorts. He fires his fancy wooden space gun at the taller vampire,who just looks bored with everything, and the fight begins. Steve and Natasha go for the vampire in the coat, who'd dodged out into the common room when Rocket opened fire; the bored vampire charges towards Rocket and meets Nebula instead. Rocket keeps Nebula's opponent from leaving hand-to-hand range with carefully aimed shots, while Steve and Natasha's long familiarity with each other's fighting styles leads them into a smooth, relentless barrage of strikes and parries. Steve spots an opening, stabs at the vampire in the coat—

An unearthly scream rips through the air, echoing from every direction at once. "I thought you said Loki couldn't talk anymore!" Nebula says, still trading blows with the bored vampire—

Someone is pounding on the door. Steve blinks and looks around, realizes he's standing in the amalgamated shitty apartment he sometimes dreams of. He doesn't have time for this, though, he needs to be—

The vampire in the coat has him by the arm, and keeping his grip wheels to grab Natasha as well when she takes advantage of his focus being on Steve to try for her own killing blow. They both still have hands free, though, and switch their stakes to their free hands—

The pounding on the door gets louder. "Steve? Steve!" Loki's voice, muffled by two inches of cheap door but still audibly rough. Panicked, even. Steve reaches for the door—

He crashes into a chair as Natasha hits the near wall, both of them thrown out of reach before they can finish their attacks. The vampire in the coat follows Steve, crouches down over him and grabs his throat—

The door swings open, not from Steve's hand or Loki's incessant knocking but of its own volition. Loki is barely clinging to the door frame now, strong winds tearing at him, and he looks broken-pale and dead the way he does when Steve sees him in the waking world. The winds are only a light breeze against Steve's skin, but they feel like _away_ ; he knows, if he lets them take Loki, that this may actually be the last anyone ever sees of him.

"Their leader has magic," Loki yells over the wind, rather than beg for Steve's help. "He means to use Sunny as a power source for something. I couldn't learn what, but I killed one of his underlings, so your odds of survival aren't completely abysmal. Tell Sunny—"

Loki's grasp is slipping, and the wind roars louder. Steve doesn't think in that moment. He reaches out and grabs Loki's hand, yanking him into the apartment with all his strength. Loki crashes through the doorway and into Steve, slumping as though exhausted.

"Tell him yourself, you melodramatic ass," Steve tells him, and then—

He can't breathe. He can't _breathe_ , and a part of him is ready to lash out in a desperate attempt to survive for five seconds more.

But.

Another part of Steve is calm, unearthly calm. He glances briefly down at the coat of the vampire on top of him—tacky, the both of them—and smirks. "Amateur."

The vampire begins to burn above him, blood turned to magma within his very veins. It's not one of Steve's normal tricks, flashy and inefficient where he prefers chaos and quickness, but in a situation like this it gets the job done.

Steve shoves the vampire off of him before the heat on his neck gets too perilous, then leaps to his feet with a full-body kick just for the fun of it. Across the room, Natasha has just made it upright herself. Rocket's gun goes off again, and the vampire Nebula was fighting crumples to the ground with a wooden bullet in their heart. Steve smothers the flaming pile of rock, burnt flesh, and melted faux leather next to him with a gesture, and Natasha pulls a gun on him.

Loki raises his hands in surrender. "For the record," he says with Steve's mouth, "this is entirely consensual."

☆★

They don't actually have a lot of time to sort the whole possession thing out, so once Loki demonstrates his willingness and ability to cede control back to Steve (which Natasha confirms, she claims, by Steve's eye color and body language both going back to normal) they continue down the hall to Sunny's room. The way is clear, and they hear things being thrown around before they turn a corner and see the remaining vampires clustered just outside Sunny's door.

Correction: they see three vampires clustered outside Sunny's door next to a lump of lava rock on a scorched patch of carpet. It's two women and a man this time, the man gesturing in coordination with the thuds and crashes from Sunny's room. It's the women who notice them and rush in to engage; one of them comes right at Steve with her mouth open, as if she plans to rip his throat out before he has a chance to fight back.

At the last second he lifts his hand and lets the vampire's own momentum force a head of garlic into her mouth. The vampire staggers sideways and slides down the wall to the floor, screaming and clawing at her face and throat the whole way, and Steve feels the calm wash over him again. The others can handle the last pathetic underling while he takes their boss.

"Athanasi, was it?" he—Loki—says, twirling a stake in his hand in feigned idleness when the last vampire turns his attention towards him. He's got a vague eastern European look about him, and a suit that's decent enough not to invite commentary. Steve can feel how much Loki hates him, and he finds he's not especially inclined to argue. "I'll tell you just once more: step away from my son."

"Ah, just when I thought I got rid of you," Athanasi says. He starts a new gesture, this one creating lights in the air; Steve charges in before he can finish it, jabbing with the stake in one hand and slashing with a kitchen knife suddenly in the other.

"Older and stronger than you have tried," Loki says through him, "and yet here we are." They miss with the stake, Athanasi dodging backwards to avoid the hit, but the kitchen knife scores a pretty good slice across his upper arm. Steve presses his advantage, slight though it is, and lands a second hit—on the same arm as the first, which is less than ideal, but if it interferes with the vampire's ability to cast spells and fight back, Steve can live with it.

"Watch out!" Rocket calls out, but too late: Steve is grabbed from behind for the second time tonight. This time, instead of being thrown through furniture, he's slammed up against the wall, where he can see the vampire he bypassed a moment ago; she has what looks like some nasty chemical burns in and around her mouth, but that just seems to have made her madder, considering she's the one who's got him.

The other unnamed vampire is just dropping to the ground, both of Nebula's stakes buried in her chest. Before she and the rest can turn their efforts to Steve's fight, Athanasi gestures with both hands and creates a wall of red light that stops them just as surely as the real thing. Another gesture and Steve's hand, which had seemingly been moving of its own volition, slams back to stick against the wall he's pinned to.

"If you try to burn me like you did the other one," his captor warns, "I'll rip your throat out so we die together."

That must've been the final straw: from his position on the wall, Steve sees a little mouse scurry out from under a pile of ruined furniture and change into Sunny. His eyes are wide with terror and his face is pale, but he's still in his room, even as he cries out, "Daddy!"

Grinning with malicious satisfaction, Athanasi strides past Steve to Sunny's doorway and crouches to meet his eye. "Do you want your daddy to live, my little one?"

Steve—Loki—tests the arcane shackle keeping their magic contained. It's an offensively simple spell, the matter of a few moments to break, but in even that brief amount of time Sunny could step out of the safety of his room and be gone forever.

"I tell you what," Athanasi is saying, "if you come with me now, and help me cast all sorts of wonderful spells for my friends, I promise to leave your daddy _right_ here, safe and sound. Alright?"

Before Sunny can answer, Steve is already talking. "Sunny, sweetheart, listen to me: you remember the spell you and Daddy were working on the other day? To make different nightlights?" He's started trusting Loki enough not to linger in the room for their magic lessons, and it's not a spell either Loki or Sunny told him about, sandwiched as it was between far more interesting things, but right now Steve remembers it as clearly as if he'd been the one showing Sunny how to make a miniature, fully functional version of his namesake.

He feels the vampire's grip on his throat tighten in warning, but as long as her boss is trying to play nice, she can't do shit. Steve grins down at her, then looks at Sunny again. "Just do that for me, and everything will be okay."

Sunny nods shakily, cups his hands in front of him. Athanasi stumbles backwards as if he knows what's about to happen, but he's already too late: like flicking a switch, a brilliant golden-white light blazes to life in Sunny's hands. In an instant, both remaining vampires char and smolder and turn to ash, retaining their shapes only because nothing has upset their tenuous equilibrium.

The remains of Steve's captor are the first to fall, no match for simple gravity. Athanasi's spells dissolve at the same time, and Steve—Loki—shutters Sunny's light before it can blind anyone. Sunny looks up at him, fear giving way to confusion, and Steve wonders how he sees them right now.

"Hello, darling," Loki says, opening Steve's arms for a hug and beaming with love and pride and _relief_. Sunny runs out of his room to both of them, launching himself into their arms, and starts sobbing into Steve's shoulder.

"We're gonna go clean up a little," Natasha tells Steve, kicking through the pile of ash that used to be an actual vampire wizard.

"I think we're gonna turn in for the night," he responds, and he's grateful but not surprised when she nods in understanding and leaves with Rocket and Nebula.

Steve rubs Sunny's back and pets his hair on the walk back to Steve's room, telling him how brave and smart and strong he was tonight, and by the time they arrive Sunny's dozed off back to sleep. Steve toes off his shoes, careful not to wake him, and then lays him on the bed and curls up around him so Sunny will know he's safe if he has any nightmares.

"Steve…" Loki begins when he finally notices they aren't joining Sunny in going to sleep.

"You never got to hold him before tonight, did you?"

This complicated mess of emotion washes over Steve, grief and gratitude and aching loneliness and other things he's too overwhelmed to identify, and he pulls Sunny closer.

"I suppose you're not as complete an idiot as I feared," Loki says.

"You're not so bad yourself," Steve agrees.

Together, they hold their son until the sun comes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five years from now, Baron Blood will have made his MCU debut and Steve's exposition interlude will just look silly. Or maybe not! Let's all check back then.
> 
> If any of the possession stuff is confusing, don't worry: it's meant to be! Differentiating between yourself and your temporary ride-along brain-partner just isn't something most humans are equipped to deal with...


	7. Chapter 7

Despite his best efforts, Steve drifts off right around dawn. He slips immediately into a dream where he's sitting out on the edge of the dock at night; vast curtains of colored light hang in the sky overhead, merging into each other or looping out and out into nothing with meditative slowness.

Loki is seated next to Steve, no more than a foot between them as they both watch the aurora. "If you have no objections," he says, "I'd like to spend the day warding this place against further incursions of the undead."

Steve reaches for the knowledge of what this would entail, but finds he no longer has access. "This wouldn't also mean you, would it?" He turns his attention to Loki as he asks, on the off chance he'll be able to catch a hint if he lies. Loki only smiles at him, looking pleased with himself under lights that shift green to magenta and back again.

"Not at all. The spell only applies to revenant creatures, spirits tied to flesh as a living soul to its body. I am merely a restless spirit, and so would remain unaffected." It sounds like a pretty narrow distinction, but Loki's the one who knows about magic here, so if he says it'll be fine Steve is willing to believe him.

"The only difficulty," Loki continues, expression turning from pleased to placating, "is I cannot place the wards myself. They must be set physically—carved, painted, engraved, or what have you. Doing so myself, while possible, would take a considerable amount of time and effort. It would be far simpler to have Sunny convey the appropriate runes on my behalf, and for you or one of your teammates to place them."

The problem with this plan is pretty obvious: with Loki the only one in the compound who knows anything about magic, he could sneak any number of unpleasant side effects into these wards of his with no one the wiser. Steve doesn't think he will, though. Something in the past eight hours has flipped the Idiot Switch in his brain in Loki's favor, the part of him that looks at a desperate assassin or a perfect stranger and goes "I trust you", and despite its name the Idiot Switch has yet to misjudge a person.

"Good thing you put me to sleep," Steve says to Loki, "because it sounds like we've got a big day ahead of us."

Loki smiles at him again. Overhead, the aurora's slow dance continues.

☆★

The remaining vampire corpses were moved outside before everyone went to bed, so they're already ash by the time Steve wakes up. He scatters most of what's left but gathers some of the ashes in a bucket; one trip to the art store and some elbow grease later, he has paint made from real vampire bits.

"Daddy says that's _disgusting_ ," Sunny reports gleefully when he sees the thick gray liquid.

"Yeah, well he's the one who said it would be more effective, so he has no one to blame but himself," Steve says. He doesn't comment on Sunny abandoning the use of Loki's proper name.

It takes pretty much all day to ward every building in the compound. Sunny is disturbingly good at pushing down his own boredom, but Steve is starting to recognize the signs of its approach and does his best to mitigate it in the moment. He quizzes Sunny on his colors by asking him at random intervals to change the ward runes he shows for Loki, and Sunny leaps at the chance to make them look nice.

They do numbers by counting Steve's brush strokes, and start learning the runes they're using by getting Loki to explain them in terms simple enough for Sunny to convey. They kill a whole two hours listening to an audiobook of The Hobbit before Sunny gets tired of that distraction, and then he spends another hour finger painting directly on the floor—with store-bought tempera, because Steve's not a monster.

Cleaning up they make a race of, and then there's dinner and an early bedtime for Sunny, who insisted earlier that he didn't need a nap if they were doing magic all day and then just barely managed to prove it. He sleeps like a rock, and for once so does Steve.

Thursday is easy. Friday is the wedding.

★☆

The wedding is also pretty easy, actually. Tony and Pepper are both the happiest Steve's ever seen them, Pepper just radiating with it and Tony kind of joyfully bewildered. The Avengers, such as they are these days, are clustered comfortably in the first row and a half of Tony's side of the audience—except for Rhodey, who's best man, Okoye, who stayed in Wakanda, and Clint, who nobody's really heard from since the FBI found his ankle bracelet with the band sliced clean through right after the Snap. (Nobody expected Clint to show up, but Steve knows a part of Natasha hoped he would.)

Steve hasn't been to a wedding since 1944, when one of the USO girls and her stagehand sweetheart finally tied the knot right as he happened to be on leave. Being at this one, in the middle of a group consisting of a god, a world-class assassin, a real-life Doctor Jekyll, two aliens, a woman best classified as a living star, and a small boy—his own son—who wields wonders as simply as breathing, feels just as natural as that one ever did.

It feels, same as he told Tony a lifetime ago, like a family.

☆★

A streak of lime green ricocheting through the reception crowd is the only warning Steve gets before Sunny launches himself into Steve's arms, thoroughly derailing a conversation about the recently resumed baseball season.

"Daddy Daddy Daddy! Mr. Wong can do magic!"

"Can he, now?" Steve's tone automatically switches to indulgent, with normal adults on one side and his son's unbridled enthusiasm in the other, but when he looks up he sees a serious-looking Asian man in nondescript robes walking towards them. Politely extracting himself from his current group, Steve makes his way over to intercept the guy.

"Captain," Wong greets him with a nod.

"You're the guy who cut off the bigger alien's arm in New York," Steve responds; Bruce had pointed him out earlier but was distracted by some friendly scientists before he got a chance to introduce anyone.

"And you're friends with a ghost." He doesn't seem particularly upset about the idea, but people lie all the time.

"Did Sunny tell you about that?"

Wong glances to the side, and Sunny claps a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. "Seeing spirits is a common ability for those who practice the mystic arts," Wong says with some exasperation, and… yeah, okay, that makes sense. Steve ducks his head in a sheepish nod, and Wong continues.

"I just wanted to let both of you know there's a place for Sunny in Kamar-Taj if he ever wants to learn human magic. Dr. Banner has been to our New York sanctum, which I believe Loki is familiar with, as well." This time when Wong looks at the empty space next to Steve it's to give it the side-eye, before offering Steve a business card bearing only an address in Greenwich Village. "We're also equipped to deal with mystical problems, should the need arise."

That sounds like the kind of information he should pass on to Natasha later, so Steve makes a mental note as he accepts the card—even as another thought occurs to him. "You wouldn't happen to know where we could get some proper wooden stakes, would you?"

He does.

★☆

At some point, Tony goes up to the DJ's setup and grabs a microphone. "Alright," he says when the music stops, "I want you all to think of what's gonna happen next as my own little hobbit-style wedding present to all of you. Will Thor Odinson please report to the dance floor?" A cheer goes up in the crowd, growing as Thor does, indeed, emerge to take over the center of the dance floor.

"Oh my god, they're actually doing it," Bruce says, but then instead of fleeing to a quieter corner he heads out onto the dance floor too, dragging Steve along behind him. "Come on, come on, it's the electric slide, it's gonna be great."

Sunny follows Steve, and they converge on Thor with Rhodey and Tony and Carol, of all people. Nebula joins them too, after some beckoning on Tony's part, and Rocket stays on the sidelines with Pepper, who is covering her eyes, and Natasha, who has her phone pointed directly at Steve and gives him an innocent look when he discreetly flips her off.

The music starts, the other guests draw back in around them, and a line dance starts with Thor giving off blue-white sparks at its heart. Steve picks up the steps easily enough that he can divert some of his attention to making sure Sunny doesn't get stepped on, but Sunny is having a blast putting extra spin into his turns and shooting off illusory cartoon lightning bolts.

"We gotta teach you the robot next," Rhodey tells Nebula when the song is over; Steve retreats to avoid getting pulled into that, only to have Natasha hook him into a conversation with some relative of Pepper's who's more than happy to tell them both how much she loves Steve's Sunny-approved, peacock-blue suit.

For once, it's not an attempt to get Steve a love life, which oddly leaves him feeling pretty damn good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't justify going into detail on the suits, but Steve's has a double-breasted waistcoat cut low enough that you can tell it's tiddy time even when his jacket's on, so you _know_ he's looking good.


End file.
